If brunettes and blondes can get along, all of us can. That’s the message we’re taking from these photos of American actresses Susan Hayward, brunette, and Virginia Dale, blonde, made just for today. Our plan is to emulate not only their peaceable attitudes, but to enjoy copious amounts of sun, sand, and fun, but with the added element of many icy cold beverages. Hope you have a similar plan. Enjoy the holiday.

Above, a Paramount promo photo shot by the legendary George Hurrell of American actress Susan Hayward and her famous profile from both sides. Hayward was signed with Paramount from 1938 to 1943, which helps bracket this photo, and the costuming leads us to believe it was probably shot for the film noir Among the Living, which was released in 1941. But we could be wrong. Anyone with better info please feel free to drop us a line.

Well, that was fast. We got an e-mail like fifteen minutes after posting this informing us this photo was shot in 1937. We took a look around the internet using the year as a search term, and sure enough, other photos that appear to be from this session popped up, indeed dated 1937. But, hmmm, we aren't too sure about that. Hayward wasn't signed to Paramount until 1938, and then only to a $200 a week bit player contract. Up to that point she'd had no credited roles at all. Also, from doing this website we've learned how incorrect information can spread across the internet because, well, journalists are lazy. One website gets something wrong and it's wrong everywhere you look for eternity. So we're going to stick with 1941 on this until someone has truly definitive info.

Hush-Hush magazine goes for broke in this issue from August 1963, offering up a slate of tales narrated in their usual breathless style. First, they tell us how Roddy McDowall took nude photographs of Elizabeth Taylor on the set of Cleopatra and tried to sell them, but was thwarted when she “erupted like Mount Vesuvius”. They then demonstrate the limits of their imaginations by telling us that Italian singer Silvana Blasi reacted like “an uncontrollable Mount Vesuvius” when an African-American dancer was hired at the Folies Bergère. Two volcano similes in one issue is bad enough, but the same mountain? For investigative journalism, Hush-Hush shows us photographs of a dead Carole Landis and an unconscious Susan Hayward, and concludes that sleeping pills are bad. And finally, the magazine stokes the fires of paranoia with two stories: in the first, they explain how Fidel Castro plans to conquer America with heroin, which he’s growing with the help of two-thousand Chinese advisors; in the second, they reveal that the second wife of Dr. Sam Sheppard is a Nazi who plans to revive the Third Reich, and that she’s being helped by—you guessed it—Fidel Castro, who is somehow a communist and a Nazi. Neat trick that. As we’ve mentioned before, though these stories are laughable, people actually believed them, and believed them by the millions, as evidenced by Hush-Hush’s sales figures. The lesson is clear: the choice between popularity and truth is really no choice at all.

V is one of our favorite vintage publications. This one was published sixty-two years ago today, and features cover star Susan Hayward. V was basically a celebrity and culture magazine, but also emphasized sexuality by publishing artful nude photos. If we’re reading this cover correctly, the magazine launched in 1943—curious, since there was a little thing called World War II raging then. We have a hard time believing a Nazi or Vichy-approved V is the same as the one we’re seeing here, but we’ll look into that. Whatever transition the magazine made from the war to post-war years, in the fifties it changed again from handtinted covers featuring film celebs, to pin-ups conjured from the airbrushes of some of France’s best illustrators, such as the image from René Caille below. One wonders if these are two distinct magazines with the same name. We'll look into that too. Anyway, Caille isn’t as well known as pin-up masters like Vargas or Bolles, but as you can see he was a singular talent. We located a few more V covers, and we’ll show you those later.

American comedian Lou Costello, of the famous comedy team Abbott & Costello, dies of a heart attack at Doctors' Hospital in Beverly Hills, three days before his 53rd birthday. His career spanned radio and film, silent movies and talkies, vaudeville and cinema, and in his heyday he was, along with partner Abbott, one of the most beloved personalities in Hollywood.

1933—King Kong Opens

The first version of King Kong, starring Bruce Cabot, Robert Armstrong and Fay Wray, and with the giant ape Kong brought to life with stop-action photography, opens at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. The film goes on to play worldwide to good reviews and huge crowds, and spawns numerous sequels and reworkings over the next eighty years.

1949—James Gallagher Completes Round-the-World Flight

Captain James Gallagher and a crew of fourteen land their B-50 Superfortress named Lucky Lady II in Fort Worth, Texas, thus completing the first non-stop around-the-world airplane flight. The entire trip from takeoff to touchdown took ninety-four hours and one minute.

1953—Oscars Are Shown on Television

The 26th Academy Awards are broadcast on television by NBC, the first time the awards have been shown on television. Audiences watch live as From Here to Eternity wins for Best Picture, and William Holden and Audrey Hepburn earn statues in the best acting categories for Stalag 17 and Roman Holiday.

1912—First Parachute Jump Takes Place

Albert Berry jumps from a biplane traveling at 1,500 feet and lands by parachute at Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. The 36 foot diameter chute was contained in a metal canister attached to the underside of the plane, and when Berry dropped from the plane his weight pulled the canopy from the canister. Rather than being secured into the chute by a harness, Berry was seated on a trapeze bar. It's possible he was only the second man to accomplish a parachute landing, as there are some accounts of someone accomplishing the feat in California several months earlier.

1932—Lindbergh Baby Is Kidnapped

The twenty-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh III, is kidnapped from the family home in East Amwell, New Jersey. Over two months later the toddler's body is discovered in woods a short distance from the home. A medical examination determines that he had died of a massive skull fracture. A German carpenter named Bruno Hauptmann is arrested, tried, and convicted for the crime. He is sentenced to death and executed in April 1936.

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